Monkfish Liver "Torchon"

Hello everyone,

For Christmas I am planning to make a monkfish liver in the style of a foie gras au torchon. I had to special order the liver and I am getting it on December 18th so I had 2 questions.

Once the torchon is cooked, how long does it keep in the fridge? And could I freeze it?

For the details, I am using the recipe in Thomas Kellers Under Pressure. Basically, it calls for 3h in a brine (roughly 6% salt, 2.5% instacure #1). Roll it up, and cook 64C for 3h15.

Thank you.

Find more posts tagged with

Recipes Q's

Comments

Tim_230841

I have no answer to your question, but I have a question myself. Where did you order the monkfish liver online?

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

I know you can successfully freeze foes gras (some altered texture) so I would think you could freeze this without a problem as a torchon.

DISCLAIMER:

PLEASE be advised, this sugesstion is after a LOT of Malbec and Cab this evening

lebrun.virgile

No I ordered it at my local fishmonger. He doesn't keep it in stock but he could special order it.

lebrun.virgile

Yep, regular foie gras you can freeze with minimal loss in quality but not sure with monkfish.

lebrun.virgile

Torchons are in the cooking bath so I thought I would take that time to update this thread, and give a few tips to anyone wanting to do something similar in the future. I had enough liver for two small torchons each about 4in long and 1.5in diameter. So I will chill them overnight, taste test one tomorrow and freeze the other one for the 24th.

The recipe itself is easy. The only "hard" parts are deveining the liver and the roulade. For deveining, you can watch a youtube video on how to devein a regular foie gras and it is basically the same thing. Might be even easier with the monkfish because the veins are less fragile. For the roulade, I decided to forgo the cheese cloth called for in Keller's recipe and used plastic wrap. For visual instruction you can follow any of the roulade recipes on Chefsteps.

I did hit a small snag on a detail that is not mentionned in the recipe, and actually rarely mentionned in other recipes for monkfish liver. It was quite the surprise when I started deveining and found worms. It all nearly ended in the trash but after some Googling I found that monkfish is often infested with worms. Not dangerous if properly cooked, 60C for 10min is the recommendation I found. So I removed all the worms and proceeded with the rest of the recipe. (If you aren't easily grossed out you can click this link for a similar recipe and surprise from someone that took pictures: http://www.allenhemberger.com/alinea/2013/02/monkfish-lime-banana-monkfish-liver/ )